Abstract
With more than 60% of the world population living in urban areas, cities are becoming at the centre of attention in academic institutions and government organizations. However, there appears to be a continuous fragmentation in the types of knowledge developed where issues or concerns are always addressed in isolation and many factors critical to a comprehensive understanding of cities towards creating better urban environments are oversimplified at best or ignored at worst. Therefore, the thrust of this paper is to demonstrate the thought processes involved in instigating frameworks, raising questions, and establishing objectives for responsive city research. It aims to present two triadic agendas that untangle the essential components of city research; the first is the Lefebvrian triadic conception on the production of space and the second is the triadic perspective of lifestyles theories for understanding housing developments, typologies, and choices. Contextually, while the theoretical underpinnings of these agendas are developed based on a body of knowledge generated in the context of the Western world, their conceptualisation is adapted to grasp and examine key unique particularities of selected emerging (and globalised) Arab cities in the Gulf region. Calling for the need for a trans-disciplinary thinking paradigm for city research, the two agendas adopt an integrationist approach that is amenable to understanding the urban realities of these cities.
Highlights
Contextualisation – underpinning interpretations on city researchDeciphering the complexity of city research or the development of comprehensive knowledge on cities and within the current rapid transformations of urban, social, and economic environments warrants the initiation of a brief overview on the conception of cities which has evolved since the early 20th century
This would act as the theoretical base for the two integrationist agendas for city research identified for this paper and the subsequent operationalization of these agendas into research frameworks and implementation programmes
During 1980s the discourse generated by Castells and Harvey was heavily criticised because of its abstract and intangible nature with respect to the conceptions of cities. Despite their effort to analyse the production of urban environments from a universal perspective, their theories were increasingly perceived as limiting to innovative empirical urban research and were later marginalised due to the emerging focus on decentralised urban governance and the emergence of regional and global hubs within expanding networks
Summary
Deciphering the complexity of city research or the development of comprehensive knowledge on cities and within the current rapid transformations of urban, social, and economic environments warrants the initiation of a brief overview on the conception of cities which has evolved since the early 20th century. One of the prominent scholars in this regard was Manuel Castells who introduced the collective consumption theory (Castells, 1972) through which cities are regarded as the product of public interventions defining urban morphologies by policies and infrastructures such as public housing and public transport The result of this shift in focus was what is often referred to as the “new urban sociology” where attention to governance and decision-making started to reflect significantly on city research. During 1980s the discourse generated by Castells and Harvey was heavily criticised because of its abstract and intangible nature with respect to the conceptions of cities Despite their effort to analyse the production of urban environments from a universal perspective, their theories were increasingly perceived as limiting to innovative empirical urban research and were later marginalised due to the emerging focus on decentralised urban governance and the emergence of regional and global hubs within expanding networks. New housing development patterns can be identified in emerging cities, in the Global South, where they face a continuous upgrading and updating process rooted in new dynamics, including rising land and rental prices, new demographic characteristics and the economic realities resulting from various migration patterns (Aerni, 2016)
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